Faithful Duality: Myouren Side
by Wolfsbane706
Summary: Toyosatomimi no Miko has always been after Byakuren as to who's the better leader of the two. This time is no different, except for one minor detail. Miko has come up with her most deranged challenge yet: an ice skating contest! Collaboration project with Unending Empire.


Winters in Gensokyo were beautiful, but _freezing! _Byakuren Hijiri poked and prodded at the magical fire that kept her warm. Makai had been a temperate climate, with moderate temperature changes. Gensokyo, however, could go from a full hundred degrees Fahrenheit with about 20% humidity, down to five degrees below zero, 0% humidity throughout the span of a day.

And joining Byakuren at that fire was...well, most of the Myouren Temple's residents. Most particularly sitting by the fire were the ghost of a sailor and a certain undefined girl. Speaking up, the latter - in an almost-absurdly wool-coated form (mostly for insulation) - said "I hate winter. A lot."

"Patience, Nue. Give it some months, and we'll be back in spring."

"Just for us to get back to winter later on," the undefined girl muttered. Part of her had to wonder. Just where was Mamizou during all of this? What was she doing, and how did she cope with the cold? Maybe she snuck into the Dream Palace Mausoleum disguised as their jiang shi gatekeeper, and buried the real one in snow!

…

It sounded unlikely, but Nue lived for knowing that nobody knew.

**Meanwhile, at that exact mausoleum...**

"W-We'll have to start burning tapestries p-pretty soon," the Crown Prince of Taosim seethed through chattering teeth. Maybe it was just the youkai exterminator within her, but part of Toyosatomimi no Miko wished she could just throw the jiang shi gatekeeper into the fire. Sure, it was completely unreasonable and would probably cause Seiga to up and abandon the mausoleum, but all facts faced, a jiang shi would probably burn for quite some time.

"J-J-Just endure, Crown P-Prince." Sitting directly across the fire from Miko was one Mononobe no Futo, every bit as cold as her esteemed leader. Unlike those at the Myouren Temple, most of the folks here _weren't_ magically inclined. Seiga had pretty strong magic, but she wasn't really the "light a magical fire" type. Her specialty was more on the side of "bubble, bubble, toil and trouble" end of the spectrum. Despite her undisputed loyalty to Miko, a large part of Futo was considering packing it in, running across the village to the Myouren Temple, and seeing if they were faring any better than the Taoists were.

Then again, that would go against everything she'd signed up for when she'd submitted her loyalty over to Miko. If the Prince froze, Futo would freeze with her. If the Prince took skating lessons, Futo would take skating lessons with her, though she wondered just _why _the Prince would take ice skating lessons. Despite being, well, a Prince, Miko had all the grace of a fire truck when it came to things not related to swordplay. Actually, now that she thought about it, she had an idea! To her knowledge, nobody from either the Myouren Temple nor the Dream Palace Mausoleum had _ever _been ice skating, so that would be the perfect excuse to get a competition going between the two parties! "C-c-crown P-prince, I have an id-dea," Futo managed to stutter out before her teeth chattered so hard she couldn't speak coherently. "Ice sk-skating."

**Myouren Temple . . Again**

As luck had it, the crew of the Myouren Temple found Mamizou. Cleverly disguised as a torch. Now the drunkard tanuki was taking on the form of a pretty large bonfire just outside the Myouren Temple. Nue for one seemed pretty bitter (no pun intended) that such a prodigal idea hadn't hit her earlier, but sat around the fire all the same. Now all the Buddhists were around the fire otherwise known as Mamizou, partially because it was outside so Ichirin and Kyouko could join in as well, and partially because it was still freaking cold outside. By most accounts, the snowfall didn't help much. It also wasn't so great for visibility, considering how heavy, wet, and thick the snowflakes were.

It seemed that besides Byakuren, who wore her heaviest robes for this express purpose, and Nue, who'd lost herself inside her thickest fur coat, every girl around Mamizou's fire was shivering. Murasa, most of all. Being a sailor, the ghosty girl was used to rather warm temperatures, so these sub-zero winters were rather new to her. The poor girl's teeth were chattering so hard she couldn't even speak. Ichirin was a bit better off, though all she had were thin summer robes, so she was curled up tight, with Unzan floating around to try and generate heat. It wasn't working. Kyouko, who was actually used to these temperatures, was still shivering, just not as badly as Ichirin or Murasa. Nazrin was second-worst-off, but she was curled up in Shou's lap, much to the half-frozen tiger's embarrassment.

That was when the group around the fire heard it. Accompanying three sets of footsteps came an all-too-unwanted voice resounding in the icy air around the temple. "_BYAKUREN HIJIRI_!" Toyosatomimi no Miko, the leader of the opposing Taoists, making her loud and ungraceful entry to the temple's grounds by shouting the name of the Buddhist monk as loud as she possibly could. Wrapped tightly around her was her purple dragon cape she'd gotten when the time came to spread the word of Taoism to a nihilistic Human Village. It proved handy for keeping her warm too. Behind her were Mononobe no Futo, Seiga Kaku, Soga no Tojiko, and Yoshika Miyako. All but the jiang shi were shivering enough to make limb loss seem plausible, even if kind of ridiculous. The lack of winter clothes on their part may have had something to do with it. "I have come to prove once and for all who the superior leader is!"

"Can we do this in spring? We're all very cold, and-"

"**HAH!** As if some simple cold is that big a deal!" Just as Miko had the nerve to speak up, a particularly icy wind blew through. It threw Miko's cape back to where it should have been - only over her back - and what immediately followed was the Crown Prince shivering just as badly as the people behind her. Only long enough to get her cape back around her, but the point stood. She was just talking a big game...

"You don't seem especially warm yourself," the monk calmly replied. Always calm, this one. There was a reason the phrase "as patient as a Buddhist monk" was created, right? "You should sit. You could-"

"No way!"

"C-C-Crown Prince," Futo added into the not-so-heated discussion. "M-Maybe we sh-should take her up-p-p on that o-offer..."

"Hey! This was _your_ idea in the first place, so you have to tough it out just as much as me!" With that, the Crown Prince turned her back to Byakuren, facing her followers instead. All but Yoshika looked about ready to freeze to death. "That's what loyalty's all about, right? Pushing through the thick and thin with your charismatic leader."

"You were saying about superior leaders?" Byakuren inquired. If she wanted to see the Taoists argue amongst themselves, she could easily have Nue and Mamizou pose as two of them and verbally duke it out.

"Right!" Spinning back to the monk, Miko boldly declared "We hereby challenge you Buddhists to an ice-skating competition!"

* * *

Welcome to Faithful Duality, a little collaboration project between me and Unending Empire. This first chapter was done by both of us, but subsequent chapters will be done separately.


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